


There was one mystery

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: Tie a Yellow Ribbon [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5436266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere along the way, Maria discovers she's somehow become penpals with the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am *stretching* the definition of Christmas on this one. We're going with "hanging with your friends during the holidays" as the theme here. 
> 
> (Alternate title: Maria brings Bucky home.)

The email shows up in her inbox in mid-May.

_Keep him away._

It’s not signed, and the e-mail is a randomly generated list of letters and numbers. She’d be more concerned about it if it hadn’t managed to squeak through the insane firewalls that are naturally part of Stark Industry’s mainframe. She doesn’t bother to send it to IT for a trace, but does it herself, unsurprised that it’s an internet café, but surprised that it’s out of Albany. Too close to be a coincidence.

Attached is a picture. She and Steve at their usual Saturday market, looking warm, open, _together_. It makes her shiver and makes her smile. It doesn’t creep her out as much as it probably should.

Instead she sits back in her chair, finds herself folding her hands over her stomach. There’s only one option, really. One logical choice.

Barnes.

If she’s honest, Barnes hasn’t been that far from her mind. It’s hard for him to be when only five months ago Natasha had made contact with him in Russia. Harder still when Barnes is not far from Steve’s mind; when Steve isn’t far from her own. She knows that it’s something that hangs over Steve’s head, the knowledge that his friend is out there, that his best friend is still alive long after Steve had watched him tumble from a mountainside.

Maria’s always felt like Barnes would find his way back when he was ready. She always assumed that it really was a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’. She’s heard the stories, of course. It’s hard not to, as close to Steve as she is – _dating_ Steve, though it’s weird to think even after five months.

Which, in and of itself is something to consider here. If she replies, she knows that she cannot tell a soul. Barnes is coming to her, reaching out to her, and there has to be a reason for it; there has to be a reason he’s not reaching out to Steve. She doesn’t like the idea of keeping secrets, not from Steve, and not one like this, but she also knows that if this is really Barnes reaching out to reconnect, if he’s trying to find his place in the world today, if she can play any role in how he does that and who he turns into, she’s going to take it.

She’s going to take it and she will not abuse that trust. She knows what it’s like, to trust and have it broken. She knows what it’s like to be alone, what it takes to reach out.

_I won’t have to if you’re as good as they say you are._

She goes from meeting to meeting, but when she gets back from the last one, there’s a bright purple post-it on her desk. She doesn’t own bright purple post-its.

 _I’m better_.

She laughs, long and hard, then calls Tony and tells him there’s been a security breach.

. . . . .

The e-mail is heavy in her pocket on her way home that night. A nice metaphor, she thinks, when she knows it’s not even close to true. It’s a secret weighing heavily on her heart and she’s surprised to find it’s the first one that’s done so in a long time.

Secret keeping is as much a habit as a survival instinct at this point. She trusts so very little, even Steve, no matter how hard she tries. There are still things she doesn’t tell him, no matter how much faith she has in him, or in them. Some of them, she thinks she should, regardless of how unnecessary of superfluous they seem.

Like how much she loves him.

It’s often strange to think they haven’t exchanged the words. Darcy, in her brash moments, often asks about that proverbial ‘l-word’ when she’s lounging around the tower while Doctor Foster sleeps off her latest miraculous discovery. Except, to think that Steve and Maria don’t love each other is to underestimate them both, Maria knows. She and Steve have so rarely needed words to explain how they feel – they bungle them, they’ve both learned - and maybe that’s more on her than on him.

He’d take the words. He’d hoard them away from the world; protect them with his life. Both because it’s who he is and it’s what he does. He protects, he nurtures. He’d do that with the l-word the same way he does with everything else.

And he looks wonderful in the kitchen.

“You’re home.”

She smiles back, both a reflex and a genuine pleasure as he comes for her. It’s a half-lie, really, ‘home’, because she does not live here. Her things are not here. Well, not all of her things anyway. A surprising amount of what she would claim as ‘hers’ has migrated over the last five months. Yet, there isn’t a place that’s felt quite like this, with him.

She accepts his kiss easily, hums a little. “Garlic-y.”

He laughs. “I’d apologize, but it’s really good sauce.”

The smell hits her then – he has an Italian neighbour down on the first floor, so the smell of simmering sauce is by far not new to her – and her smile broadens. There’s something wonderful, adorable and sweet about the fact that he cooks for her, that he thinks of her when he cooks.

It’s taken some getting used to.

Well, he’s taken some getting used to, really, the shockingly smooth transition from friends to lovers to _more_. It still takes her off-guard sometimes. Moments like this are worst of all, when they spend a night doing what they’d done as friends, long before he’d placed a candy cane on her desk and offered her everything she’d never expected and not a damn thing she’d thought she wanted.

She doesn’t mind so much, admitting she’d been wrong.

He turns then, nattering on as he has a habit of doing, something about the right spice and canning his own tomatoes – they’re between leads, apparently, because that’s when he gets antsy, when he wants to learn new skills – and the secret burns in her heart, in her pocket where her phone still rests, quiet and still, at least for now. It’s heavy and she can feel the way the words want to climb up her throat.

She has to remind herself that it won’t do them any good, Steve or Barnes, or even her. None of them will benefit from sharing that information now.

So she lets him talk, deflects when he asks about work, about her latest projects. She lets him wine and dine her, takes genuine pleasure in what is most excellent sauce and then lets him lure her to bed.

He doesn’t need to know she doesn’t get much sleep that night, nor does he need to know about the e-mail she slips out of bed to send, the decision she’d made that afternoon, but hadn’t made clear.

_Your secret’s safe with me._

The reply comes back while she’s staring out over Brooklyn, the light pollution poisoning any stargazing she’d be doing if she were the type.

_I know._

She has no idea if she’s made the right decision and that scares her. Terrifies her, really, because she’s not in the habit of doing things without understanding not only the consequences, but every possible outcome. Here, she knows, she doesn’t have that kind of time. She cannot weight the pros in cons on this one. She’s mid-mission, has to make the hardest kind of choice.

She has to live with it now.

She looks over at Steve, dead to the world and sprawled out on the bed. The smile tilts the corner of her mouth, the warmth she always feels just having him nearby. He’s going to be upset and she knows it, he won’t understand why she’s not just telling him everything. She chews on her cheek, her hand squeezing her phone absently.

She doesn’t like not knowing how this is going to work out. She doesn’t like not having answers. She doesn’t like the idea of ruining what she has with Steve, even if it means she brings Barnes home.

She’s in so much trouble.


	2. Chapter 2

_Get out of Europe,_ she sends him sometime around early August when Steve bursts through her office door, flushed with excitement. It kills her to do it because it’s so painfully obvious what this means to Steve. She barely sleeps that night.

It’s been a weird few months, if she’s honest. She’s not quite sure how she’s managed to become a strange sort of pen pal for the Winter Soldier, but that’s the only way she can figure out how to describe it. She learns he’s witty, that his sense of humour when it peaks out is dry as the Sahara. He’s got an elephant’s memory, when the memory kicks in, and the same little-shit gene that often gets Steve into so much trouble. And tends to be the catalyst of her more amorous nights with the American icon.

But there’s something else there, in his reluctance to say too much, to go too far. There’s something in what he doesn’t say – the fact that he never refers to Steve by his given name, nor by his ‘title’, for example – as much as in what he does. He often attaches pictures, though she’s learned headlines are his favourite ( _Nice work, Boss_ , attached to an article on a neutralized mob boss with ties to Hydra. She’d been a part of that, sure, but she hadn’t been in on it. She wonders absently how he knows, then thinks of a bright purple post-it. He’s certainly proving his skills.) and has no compunction in passing along intel.

(“The cell you thought was traveling to Haiti? We don’t have to worry about them anymore,” she tells Melinda once, because she has experience with the fact that deputies often know just as much, if not more than their directors. And Phil likes to have _conversations_ , ask her about how she’s doing, how Steve’s doing. She loves Phil, but she’s not gossiping with him.

“Oh?”

Maria’d smiled to herself as she glanced at the security video Barnes had attached to an e-mail, a sniper’s scope and the spray of blood. “It’s been taken care of.”

“By whom?”

She’d locked her eyes on Melinda’s. “A friend.”

Melinda had known better than to ask more.)

The next day, she finds Natasha in her office.

“He already knew,” she says quietly.

Maria takes that in, takes a minute to connect that Natasha’s talking about Steve’s trip overseas. “You’re in contact with him.”

Natasha shrugs, but there’s an expression that darts across her face can only be termed ‘girlish’. “He knows how to show a girl Christmas in Moscow.”

It doesn’t take her long to put two and two together. Natasha’s Christmas Eve text and the way she’d returned to New York looking more put together and sure of herself. Then the click. “You’re the one that passed on my email.”

Natasha doesn’t say a thing, not that she has to. Maria’s not stupid enough to think it’s quite that simple. In fact, she thinks, it’s all crystallizing. She sighs as she rounds her desk, sets her pad on her blotter while she settles in her seat.

“You think I can get him back.”

“No,” Natasha answers vehemently enough that Maria’s surprised. The brief glimpse she gets of the Widow’s fingers tightening on the chair gives her away. Maria isn’t stupid enough to think the woman is slipping so much as trying on new identities. “I think you are the most invested neutral party.”

“That’s an oxymoron.”

Natasha’s mouth twitches. Maria leans back in her seat.

“We’re talking about my boyfriend’s-“ Maria’s nose wrinkles because dear God, she hates that term, but ‘lover’ isn’t much better, “brainwashed best friend. I’m just as compromised as the rest of you.”

“Says the woman who took down the closest thing she’s ever had to home.”

Maria rolls her eyes. “You would have done the same.”

Natasha’s quiet for a moment and Maria gives her the silence, lets her swallow the belief in the Widow that Maria rarely shows. Natasha doesn’t need the validation from her.

“This is different.”

Maria’s head comes up, meets Natasha’s gaze head on. “Is it?”

“You’ll make the right decision.”

Maria groans. “People _need_ to stop saying that.”

Natasha shrugs, then fixes Maria with a deadly serious look. “That man is many things to many people. You aren’t coloured by any of that.”

Maria holds Natasha’s gaze for a beat, doesn’t look away when she feels it crawling up her neck because she has never once been cowed by the Black Widow. She makes no promises, however, aware that she just can’t. It’s not fair to any of them.

(More than that, Natasha’s wrong. She’s coloured by many things, his kill-count being one of them and the high-powered names behind those numbers, the fact that Fury’s name should, for all intents and purposes, be on that list. The difference is she’s seen what someone with the Winter Soldier’s skills can do given the right motivation. The example is standing right in front of her. Natasha Romanoff, for all of the red in her ledger, is a woman to aspire to, if Maria weren’t already her own hero.

Is it so bad that she’s starting to want that for Barnes too?)

“In the meantime, leave the warnings to me,” Natasha says as she pushes off the chair and heads for the door. “Keeping emails from Steve is one thing but there’s no need to test how much he loves you by actively sabotaging his efforts.”

She won’t argue – Natasha’s not wrong, after all – but she frowns at the assassin’s back. She doesn’t like the idea of Natasha taking the fall or the heat for this, not when she doesn’t have to.

The chime of her phone distracts her from her thoughts.

_Landed safe. Keep you posted. Miss you._

Guilt crashes around her for a moment before she shoves it all away and picks up the device. She’s doing the right thing, she repeats to herself, letting Barnes come to them. She’s making the right choice.

The same way she always does.

. . . . .

The weird part about it is that she sits on pins and needles for days. It drives her insane in equal measure, thinking about Steve finding Barnes, about Barnes being found when he’s still not ready… Not even work can distract her, and work is always, always there for her. She’s uneven and snappy, an utter mess and she abhors it.

But it’s more than that.

It twists her heart up, pokes holes in her resolve to stay away until he asks, to keep Steve out of it. She drops her head into her hands and breathes, slow and steady counts to five. This level of trust is something she’s only used to in people who have forced her to earn it. She’s earned Steve’s trust, she knows, and she’s damn well earned Natasha’s, Clint’s, even Stark and Banner’s.

But this… This is not earned trust.

This is trust given freely, at least initially and she certainly doesn’t feel like she’s gone on to earn it. Not really. Not like this.

Maybe that’s the real battle of it, the idea that she actually wants to earn Barnes’ trust (for a myriad of reasons she doesn’t generally bother inspecting), that she wants him to know that he has someone who doesn’t expect him to be anything. Not a lover, not a friend, not someone soft, or someone hard. Maria’d long ago decided she didn’t care who Barnes was, so long as he didn’t want to be a thoughtless killing tool. She’s just not sure she ever really anticipated betraying the trust she’s earned with Steve to do it.

She all but jumps for her phone when it chimes, finds she is utterly shocked to see her Snapchat icon – Steve’s doing, actually, because he likes sharing what he sees when he’s on a mission but knows there can’t be evidence of it – notifying her of a new message.

It’s a short video of a panorama. She’s done enough studying to identify Machu Pichu.

He’s safe.

On it’s heels comes a message from Natasha: _Told you._


	3. Chapter 3

“He’s always three steps ahead,” Steve says one night, sounding alone and despondent. He gets like this when he’s been chasing Barnes too long, when he hasn’t been home, reminded of the things he does have despite what he doesn’t.

“You knew he would be,” she murmurs, fingers fiddling with her nightshirt. His shirt. He doesn’t need to know that.

“It’s been two years, Maria. I figured he’d want to come home eventually.”

Her eyes close and she finds herself turning her head into the pillow that’s usually his. It doesn’t smell like him, of course. It’s been too long since he’s stayed at hers, not that it matters given how long he’s been away. She hates that it doesn't smell like him.

(She wonders if maybe there’s a good way to fix that, like nixing this whole separate bed thing completely. But she’s never been one to rock the boat.)

“Maybe it’s not eventually just yet.”

It’s the best she can give and it sucks. There is really no better technical term for it. It’s a sucky clichéd line that she’s already beating herself up about muttering.

“What if it never is?”

She smiles despite herself, too tired to avoid the thoughts of the Andes mountains and the ridiculous series of Snapchats trailing up the west coast of South America. “I doubt that.” She pauses. “Have you spoken to Natasha?”

His huff is annoyed now. “She says the same thing. Wait, be patient, he’ll come to you. Are the two of you conspiring behind my back?”

It is only years’ worth of training that keeps Maria from reacting in a way Steve could pick up on. They’re not, not really. Maria’s been justifying it to herself by thinking that they’re doing this for Barnes. This is always about Barnes. Steve’s going to get hurt, she knows that, he’s going to be upset and angry and betrayed, but she doesn’t want to bring pieces of Barnes back to him. She wants Barnes to be whole, whatever that whole means.

“I feel like I’m chasing my tail.”

“So come home,” she says, in the impulsive way she has when it comes to this, to Barnes and to Steve being away so long. She’s not dependent, she just misses him.

“Maria.”

“Come home,” she presses, because she can hear how tired he is, how weary. “Come home and we’ll regroup; we’ll put together a new plan.”

She can hear the resignation in his sigh, but he says, “Yeah. Maybe that’s a good idea.”

 

He comes home a week later looking wan and down, but the smile he gives her is real and wide. She even lets him hug her right at the bottom of the quinjet ramp, lets him tuck his face into her neck.

“I don’t think I knew how much I missed you until right now.”

She laughs. She thinks if she were any other woman she’d be offended, but it’s her and it’s Steve and she’s aware of how single-minded he can be. In some ways, she’s just damn lucky he called her to check in, let alone called her at all. She knows the kind of blinders Barnes puts on him.

She can’t say she doesn't have similar ones on for the moment.

Either way, it’s been months since he was home, or it at least feels like it. She lets herself give into impulse – they’re all friends here and they’re not in a habit of keeping this thing a secret – and turns his face so she can kiss him. He falls into her immediately, pulls her closer, uses a little bit more of his strength than he usually does. She releases a choked noise because she can’t help herself, yanks on his hair.

He laughs as he relaxes, presses his forehead to hers. “I missed you.”

Their next kiss is softer, more the romance that he tends to favour. “Missed you, too.”

 

Later that night, or in the early hours of the morning, with Steve tucked away in bed while she battles against the worry an insomnia that seems to go hand-in-hand with Barnes. Steve’s done nothing but talk about his oldest friend, about the frustration of not being able to hunt him down, the worry that he’s out there alone with no one to connect to, no one to help him if he needs it and it’s left Maria unsettled, everything blurry and definitely not right.

She presses her upper lip against her phone for a moment, taps it there, her other arm wrapped around her side. Finally, she pulls up her mail, the address that makes absolutely no sense and types: _Why do you trust me?_

The answer comes the next morning, when she’s trying to drag herself through a pile of paperwork and some intel she needs to pass on to Melinda or Phil. Her entire concentration shatters until she pulls open the message and its attachments.

_Because they do_.

The attached pictures are of the lunch she and Natasha shared in Central Park last week – Natasha had slipped her a USB drive of intel with her sandwich – and another of she and Steve through his apartment window wrapped up in the quiet evening and each other. A million new questions come on the heel of that answer, not so much hows or whys but about his distinct choice to avoid the two people who have led him to trust her. ‘Objective neutral party’ and ‘you aren’t coloured by his past’ ring in her ears and keep her fingers from typing out the words ricocheting through her mind.

(She’s always been very, very good at quieting her mind.)

Instead, she frames the cozy, domestic picture of her and Steve, tucks it in her desk drawer, and doesn’t tell a soul.

 

His communication falls into a lull. For a while, she wonders if it’s deliberate, if he’d managed to read into everything she wasn’t saying in her previous couple of emails, the worry that she’s putting more on the line than she’d thought.

Except then Natasha disappears for a week, comes back looking… not haunted, but there’s an edge around her that worries Maria. And she can only come up with one explanation.

“He asked me questions I didn’t have answers to,” Natasha tells her, when Maria corners her on the mats in the gym. Natasha can kick Maria’s ass with her eyes closed, and Maria’s willing to take the beating for something like this. “About Steve. About his life before-“

Maria nods, blocks another couple of punches. Natasha doesn’t have to tell her that it hurts, that Barnes is asking questions about a time she doesn’t know anything about, a man she didn’t fall in love with. She can only sympathize, of course, but Steve often has the same concerns, the same worry that he’ll never see his friend again.

Eventually, they split, grab bottles of water. Maria looks over to Natasha. “You know I don’t want to bring James home, right?”

“I know,” the redhead answers, leans back against the wall.

But the conversation means that Barnes’ next email is less of a sucker punch than it could have been.

_I need to know him._

She ponders her answer for a week. She’s surprisingly (or not so surprisingly, depending on who’s in charge of answering a question like that) protective of Steve’s file, aware of the things he’s had to do and the things he has plainly and simply chosen not to do. She’s not sure Barnes, a man as broken as he has to be, should really be looking at a file like Steve’s.

(A little too clean, a little too righteous. She doesn’t fault Steve, but she’s seen Natasha’s fullest file on Barnes too and they are two very, very different histories.)

More than that, however, is the strange churning in her gut. This is a man who hasn’t really shown any interest in learning about who Steve is now. She can’t help but feel both suspicious and excited about the desperate note in those five words.

_Safe version_ , she writes in the end. With a couple of clicks she has Steve’s heavily redacted file attached, pictures and all. If Barnes isn’t going to look online at the SHIELD file dump, she’s not just going to toss the file into his lap.

She hears the next day that Sergeant Barnes’ uniform is missing from the Smithsonian and grins.

_Cute trick_ , she writes back and attaches the headline.

He responds with a picture of glinting metal and worn uniform. _Call it a souvenir_.

Her fingers hover over the keys for a long time, careful, calculated. _I figure you’re just taking back what’s yours._

_Is it?_

God, a loaded question. She chews her lip, a stupid habit she’s picked up from Steve and a tell she hates but can’t seem to shake. Not that anyone’s currently around to see it.

_If you want it to be._

She doesn’t get an answer.

 

She doesn’t hear from him for two months after that. He’ll send her the odd Snapchat, kind of an update telling her he’s safe, that he’s whole. He’s careful with identifying features. Beyond the picture that informed her he was in Peru, he’s been unsurprisingly careful about sending her anything that could help her identify his whereabouts. They’re all carefully not marked. She couldn’t track him if she tried. She has, of course, using IP addresses and geo-stamps. He’s too good for that.

She should be angry.

She’s mostly impressed with a side order of stupidly grateful.

He doesn’t sound insane. He doesn’t sound blank or brainwashed, doesn’t sound like an agent. Doesn’t sound like a man on a mission.

He just sounds like a man.

It’s his humanity that puts her more on edge than anything else. It makes her twitchy with the need to help, to do what she can to encourage that. She can’t help it. She figures the more ‘human’ he gets, the more likely he is to want to return to New York, to Natasha, to Steve. It feels like he’s getting closer and closer to that moment and she’s down right anxious for her.

She almost drops her tablet when she finally gets the e-mail she’s really looking for. Coordinates and a name.

_9.8833° N, 85.5333° W. Bar Arriba._

She books her flights right then and there.


	4. Chapter 4

_Can I come by?_

It is, for all intents and purposes, an innocuous text, but for Steve, it’s a bright red flag. It sets him right on edge. He honest can’t remember the last time Maria had actually asked to come by quite so impersonally, quite so politely. Their plans aren’t spontaneous, but they are casual, a movie she wants to see or a new recipe he wants to try.

This is deliberate, a calculated message, whether she meant it to be or not.

It’s validated when she not only knocks but has her black duffle slung over her shoulder. It’s all of the indicators of a mission he’s not going to like and while he knows he has no say and thus, has no intention of questioning her decision, he worries. Since they both know he’d do the same if she were Nat, Clint or Sam, he’s more than allowed.

Because Maria is good. Maria is the best. He often thinks, mostly to himself, that she should have taken over leadership of SHIELD, not Coulson, that she could take Agent May and win. He knows that she is just as good as Nat, just as good as Clint. When it comes down to it, Steve’s concern is never about her skills or her competency. It’s about the fact that that skill, that competency, means that the danger she faces when she does jump into the fray is always a lot higher, sometimes more likely to be fatal.

He’s fundamentally not a fan of situations where Maria is in danger.

She tucks her bag into his front hall closet, her shoes next to it, precise and quick. Still, she comes easily when he wraps his fingers loosely around her wrist. His arm wraps around her shoulder, the tension that’s been hanging around her for months now tight and totally obvious in the stiffness of her muscles.

He presses his mouth to her temple and asks, “What can you tell me?”

Some of the tension bleeds out of her when she sighs, her arms wrapping around his waist. He takes that as permission, pulls her close, tucks her head under his chin. She shudders and the ball of apprehension curls tighter in his stomach.

“Costa Rica,” she says. “No restrictions. Not sure how long.”

He can hear everything she’s not saying, how there are so obviously details she wants to share, but can’t. It’s these situations that are the most trying for him, the pull between wanting to know, wanting to help and respecting boundaries that really aren’t hers to break. They both know the clandestine spy thing drives him nuts.

“Mission?”

He feels her small smile curl against his neck. He kisses her hair in vague apology because yeah, he really couldn’t help himself.

“Extraction,” she answers and her hands start stroking his back. He knows what that means, what she wants from him. She’s always like this when she gets keyed up, restless and desperate.

He cups the back of her head, feels her shudder again. “Sweetheart-“

“Don’t,” she interrupts, kisses his neck, slips her hands beneath his shirt and tucks her fingertips under the elastic of his sweats. “Don’t ask me anything more.”

He starts walking them back, their steps awkward and uncoordinated. His mouth brushes against her jaw, her ear. He knows he doesn’t have much time before she gets impatient, before she decides she can’t talk about it anymore. “Do you have to keep it a secret?”

“Yes,” she responds, her voice gone a little breathless as he applies his mouth to her neck and her throat. “There are a lot of people I put in danger if this gets out.”

It’s a half-truth, he can feel it. Not the whole story but all she’s willing to tell. He curses himself for being stupid enough not to force her to make a pact, to promise him there would be no more secrets between them. Then he curses himself again because to ask that of her is unfair. So he focuses on her, the feel of her beneath his hands, against his body; the strange and twisted desperation that streaks through him as he holds her.

“When do you go?” His hands slide down, slips just beneath the curve of her ass. She lets him lift her, winds her arms around his neck and clenches her thighs around his hips.

Her mouth glances over the bone in his cheek. “In the morning,” she says. “Early.”

He gets his hand gently around the back of her neck, tilts her head, takes her mouth. She gives as good as she gets, bites at his lip. Her nails are already digging into his back, her thighs clenching tight. He shifts her, gets his teeth on her collarbone, hears her whine, needy, greedy.

He can give her this.

 

He feels her get out of bed, but plays asleep. It’ll make it easier for her, he knows. Easier for both of them, really, without overly-emotional goodbyes. Or overly-awkward ones, since the outpouring of emotion he feels just isn’t her style.

Plus, he thinks, by this point she knows. Because he certainly does.

She loves him. There isn’t a doubt in his mind, the same way there isn’t a doubt that he loves her. She knows it, or she wouldn’t be trying. She wouldn’t have come, wouldn’t have told him what she could. Maria’s not the type to do things without rhyme or reason, not things that matter.

And he definitely got the sense that this mattered.

So he lets her get up in the dark, lets her pretend she’s quiet enough that he doesn’t hear every shift of her body. He’s listening for it, of course, and awake enough to hear it, but that’s beside the point. Very beside the point.

He feels her lips against his forehead, his cheek, the press of her palm into the pillow by his head and the moment she hovers there, absorbing. Private, vulnerable moments that he will let her keep and hope that she pulls them out while she’s gone, remembers the warmth and the ease.

God, he’s pathetic and sentimental and he knows Maria would tease him mercilessly just for the thoughts racing through his head, but he can’t help himself. He’s gone over her, so in love with her, and sometimes, especially when he knows he won’t see her for a while, it just clamours up in him.

He waits, patiently, until he hears his front door close, the jangle of keys he loves because she has one of his, the all access pass to him whenever she wants. Then he’s up, anxious, slips quickly into the living room where he can see her stop at the bottom of the stairs, look back at the bedroom window. There’s a moment, a beat, and he closes his eyes, pretends he can picture the reluctance on her face, the juxtaposition of her secret-keeping and the way he could tell she wanted to just tell him everything.

Then she’s walking away.

He watches her, of course, has to try to keep himself from going after her, not because he’s pathetic but because he wants to go on this mission with her. He wants to be by her side, fight by her side – though, yes, he hadn’t really gotten the sense that this particular mission would involve much fighting – see her in her pre-Stark glory.

He doesn’t see the envelope on the front table until he finally tears himself away from the window, Maria long out of sight.

 _I’m sorry_ , the note starts, _I’ve never wanted to tell you more._ But she won’t, she never does. Never breaks permissions or confidentiality, even if he is Steve Rogers. He loves that about her, he really does. It doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating.

The note isn’t the only thing in the envelope. He tugs out the glossy picture and immediately smiles. He loves having her in his space, in his place, and she looks so warm, so comfortable. It’s because of that it takes him so long to realize that this picture isn’t a selfie, it isn’t something that’s been taken by someone they know.

Someone is watching them.

His mind races, sorting through enemies, trying to figure out who could take a picture like this without putting Maria’s back up. She’d been antsy, sure, but not the kind of antsy that spoke of hunting. It’s the antsy of a surveillance mission, an extraction.

His breath catches.

Bucky.


	5. Chapter 5

Costa Rica is a sauna. The humidity is brutal and she finds herself both cursing Barnes and her love for Steve for putting her into this situation to begin with. It isn’t supposed to be her damn job anymore. She’s long past the point of dragging assets out of foreign countries.

The bar’s fans don’t help either, merely stirring around the thick, heated air. She sighs as she scans the patrons, isn’t surprised by the lone figure in a dark corner, broad and built like Captain America. She wants to shake her head at the long sleeves he wears, the jacket from the Smithsonian, wonders if he feels like it makes him stand out less than a metal arm.

She doesn’t hesitate.

“Please tell me there’s a reason we’re meeting for the first time in what is quite obviously hell,” she says softly as she slips into the seat across from him.

There’s a tilt to his mouth that makes Maria believe all of Steve’s stories about Barnes’ womanizing days. “Figured it was a bit poetic,” he replies, voice rough. Disuse, she thinks. He’s been through a lot.

“Going through hell to find your way home?”

His eyes aren’t as hollow as she’d thought they’d be. Mostly they’re cloudy, confused, unsure. “Is that what we’re doing?”

She shrugs, leans back in the chair. “You’re the one that asked me here, Barnes.”

He takes to fidgeting for a moment, watching her silent observation. She doesn’t tell him she can do this all day, that she’s sat in shareholder meetings way less intriguing than sitting at a chipped and marked table in the height of Costa Rica’s humidity across from an assassin that theoretically shouldn’t exist.

“Who am I?” he asks, pleading in his eyes and anguish in his voice. It is almost physically painful. She’s been thinking about it a lot, what it’s like to be forcefully unmade. But she also knows what it’s like to remake yourself, to choose your next path. She’s not there to coddle him, isn’t there to walk him through the man he was. She leans forward, braces her elbows on the table and fearlessly meets his gaze.

“Don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

He glances back down at his hands, the brief glint of metal in the sunlight. “I am many things.”

Assassin. Murderer. Friend. Rescuer. Sergeant. She’s sure both of his lives, all of those titles, are blurring. Maybe even combining.

“Barnes,” she begins because she refuses to call him anything else. It’s the most neutral thing she’s got. “I don’t give a crap about what got you here. I don’t care about your body count, your career with the Commandos. All I care about is who the hell you want to be from here on out.”

He watches her, gauging, calculating.

And she can literally see the moment he sags in relief.

She feels strangely like she’s passed a test and simultaneously like she understands a conversation she had with Natasha months ago. Invested neutral party indeed.

 

…

He takes them back to his place. It’s a bit of a flop, a tiny cabin, she’s not even totally sure what to call it, but she likes the layout and the easy escape routes. The isolation too, deep enough in the rainforest that, well, no one will hear her scream.

Not that she thinks she can’t take this muddled man if she has to. Plus, she’d tapped Phil for some absolutely amazing technology, even if his scientists had been a little too gleeful at the idea of using their formula on the Winter Soldier.

(She hates that Phil knows when Steve doesn’t. It feels like a monumental misplacement of trust and she cannot stand knowing that she’s had to share with Phil what she can’t share with Steve.

Sure, she and Phil go back a ways, but this isn’t about the mission.

This is about the man.)

 

“Where are you?”

“Safe,” she murmurs back, doesn’t want to speak louder. There’s something about this place that makes her feel like she’s intruding. And he knows anyway, at least what country she’s in. “Too warm.”

He snorts. “What you get for going south.”

“Smooth, Captain.”

There’s a little hum. He’s proud of himself and she wants to laugh.

She scuffs her toe in the dirt. “Did you get my present?”

“The envelope. The pictures. Who took them?”

It’s on the tip of her tongue, she can feel the twitch of it. “A friend.”

“The friend you’re extracting?”

Maria looks back at the cabin. “Yeah.”

She knows he knows. She can feel it in the tension that follows. “You could have told me.”

“Not really,” she murmurs back, eyes on the cabin. “He, uh. He asked you not be involved.”

Jesus.

“Look,” she plows on, strides away from the little house. This is not something Barnes needs to hear. It’s not even a conversation Maria wants to be having. “He doesn’t know who he is, Steve. He doesn’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy and you and I both know that’s something he needs to figure out on his own. We owe him that. You owe him that.”

It’s a low blow. It’s _such_ a low blow. But there’s no scenario in her mind given who Steve is and who Barnes is right now that doesn’t end with one or both of them blowing up at each other. Barnes’ reintegration, should he decide that’s something he wants to do, is going to be hard enough without adding early pressure from Steve into the mix.

It’s not like Steve would try. It would be second nature, wanting his best friend back. The devastation of realizing that some of those memories, the inside jokes, the Commandos, are not memories Barnes can call up at the drop of a hat anymore. It’s tempting though, so tempting because she wants a cheat sheet. She wants the magic bullet of stories that will connect him to the here and now long enough to get him home, to have him start functioning like some sort of normal human being. Like Natasha. And hasn’t that been a struggle in itself, her constant reassurances that Barnes is fine and no, she cannot come to Costa Rica and drag him home.

Not that the Black Widow would ever outright ask such a thing.

But she also knows that the second she asks either of them for help, she’s screwed. More, Barnes is screwed, because she’s having a hard enough time keeping Nat away when she can read between the woman’s subtle hints, but Steve? She knows he’s all but itching to come down here, probably humming with the frustration and impotence of it. It’s not about his trust in her, she is very, very aware of that. It’s because he couldn’t help himself. It’s _Barnes._ But she also knows with a sort of terrifying instinct that has served her well her whole life that the minute either of them shows up, she loses Barnes.

She may get Bucky, she may get James, but she’ll sure as hell lose Barnes.

That’s not a risk she’s quite willing to take. Not when it’s so painfully obvious that the very confused and traumatized man in the cabin has placed his trust and, for all intents and purposes, his future, in her palms.

If she fails him, she fails them all.

And she does not fail.

_You’ll do the right thing_ , Natasha had said and Maria can remember the little mulish undertones to her grudgingly respectful expression. A show of trust, of faith that she could do this. Whatever this is.

So she has to trust herself and her instincts; the instincts that are telling her to keep Steve and Natasha away from Costa Rica. The gut feeling that her only job right now is to keep Barnes safe. It’s the only way she can see a light at the end of the tunnel, a way to get him out of this humid sauna of a country and back to New York. Back to Natasha.

Back to Steve.


	6. Chapter 6

The first time she’s around for a nightmare, she gets the hell out. He’s curled in a corner when she finally returns, when it’s silent in the place. Everything’s been tossed, furniture slit open. Everything except the room he’s given her.

“Barnes.”

His head comes up, eyes clouded by remorse, guilt, confusion. She almost rolls her eyes. Like she doesn’t understand PTSD. She tilts her head, puts her hands on her hips and doesn’t offer him an ounce of pity.

“I hated that couch.”

His laugh shakes around the edges, shimmers with self-deprecation, but it’s there nonetheless.

The second time, she’s not so lucky.

She can already hear him prowling when she wakes, slips her hand beneath her pillow for the gun she’d very specifically asked Phil to lend her. Slowly, carefully, she sits up, hoping upon hope that there isn’t a single bedspring that chooses to squeak. Then she levels the gun at the door.

It’s a good thing too. A moment later he bursts through, growling and wild-eyed.

“Barnes.”

He stops, but his hand still twitches, his body stays taut. Her breathing doesn’t change. She doesn’t move. She can and will wait him out. And it’s that intense focus that probably saves her life.

The air shifts, the current changes and she doesn’t hesitate.

The bullet hits his shoulder and a moment later he collapses completely and utterly unconscious.

 

Barnes comes to on the floor of his guest room with no knowledge of how he’d ended up there. Well. Nightmare, flashbacks, psychotic break, whatever. He’s not stupid and the Internet is not complicated, but this feels different.

The place is immaculate, for one thing. There’s no destroyed furniture, no slashed wallpaper. Maria’s things are whole and –

Maria.

He ignores the pounding in his head – he’s dealt with way worse – and stumbles to the living room. Everything’s pristine there too, but there’s no sign of his surprisingly compatible housemate. He finds panic rising in him, a quick rush of emotion he’s still trying to juggle with the cold competency of the soldier. _Steve’s going to kill me_ wars with _No, please not her_.

Then come the footsteps. Quick, competent, aware. Habit has him slipping to the window. Relief leaves him sagged in the corner. She’s wary and aware as she steps in, reaches for the gun at her back.

“Here.”

He sounds like shit. And if that’s not enough he feels the Soldier rise up, clamour for the gun and the upper hand. It lessens when she lowers the weapon.

“Do you have a non-stealth mode?” she asks irritably, even as she drags her bags to the kitchen. He follows slowly, not entirely sure he can trust himself. Her gaze flicks to him as she unloads eggs, fresh vegetables. “If you’re going to start self-flagellating, do it somewhere else.”

He should apologize. He should tell her this is a terrible idea, that he shouldn’t have sent her those damn coordinates to begin with. She should go home to Steve and Natalya where it’s safe and –

“Seriously, Barnes. I do not have the patience or the pity for super soldier angst.”

And maybe that’s the answer to a question he hasn’t asked yet. Maria Hill is a woman perpetually on alert, but she isn’t afraid of him. She isn’t afraid of the Soldier either. And she has never once asked him to be one or the other. She has never given him an inch.

“I can see why Steve likes you.”

He doesn’t know where the words come from but some of the irritation clears from her face.

“I didn’t get you?”

She must recognize the need to know because she stops unpacking. “No. Didn’t come close.”

Admiration wells up in him. In another life, he probably would have reached for her. Another heart too, he thinks, red flashing through his mind. Bright red that has nothing to do with blood and everything to do with white sheets in the Moscow winter.

It brings him back when she reaches behind her, puts her gun on the counter between them. He’s not stupid enough to pretend it’s not a show of trust. In _him_.

“Industrial tranquilizer formulated for Steve. Fitzsimmons calls it the Night Night gun.”

The questions that follow make his head spin. “It should be a real gun.”

“Oh, for-“ She trails off with a huff, glaring a little. “I am not paid enough to keep giving pep talks to super soldiers.”

He looks away again. “I could have killed you.”

Her eyebrow wings up. “Ditto. PTSD isn’t a walk in the park, Barnes. It’s brutal and messy and gets worse before it gets better. And even then there’s no cure.”

He blows out a heavy breath. This is why he’d isolated himself, he thinks. Because he will never be safe.

He looks up when he hears her snort. “Right, because living with a bunch of superheroes some how means I’ve managed to escape symptoms of PTSD. Jesus, Barnes, I was the Deputy Director of SHIELD. _I’ve_ had PTSD. Probably still do. None of us are safe for each other, but we make it work.”

She gives him a look that makes him feel small and stupid. “You know I’m friends with a man that turns into a giant green rage monster, right?”

He huffs on a laugh. She gives him a small smile.

“How’s your head?”

“I’ve had worse.”

She arches an eyebrow again, though neither of them needs to expand. She turns back to the groceries. “Coulson suggested a ridiculously greasy breakfast for the hangover from the drug.”

“So you went shopping.”

“Have you seen your fridge? Beer is not a food group, Barnes.”

It hits him then that in another life, another woman, he would have grinned, flirted, maybe made a move. But his mind is filled with red and this is Steve’s girl. Steve’s woman. A firecracker with a spine of steel and God, he admires that.

“I’m glad it was you.”

She releases this little humming noise as she keeps unpacking, shuffling things around with a frown he wants to laugh at. He can’t get a handle on her. It doesn’t scare him as much as he’d thought.

She glances up at him, arches an eyebrow and he finds himself struck once again with all of the reasons the punk must love this woman.

“If you’re going to pout, at least do it over bacon. This omelet isn’t going to make itself.”

 

“You know,” she says one day, apropos of nothing, as they pick through the thick jungle, “I am not a therapist.”

Barnes looks over at her, at the grumpy look she knows is on her face. She’s made an effort to give him a little bit more of the side of her Steve sees instead of the side she gives Stark Industries. She can’t help herself sometimes, because he is the Winter Soldier and seriously, _seriously_ , she does not have the time or the patience to coddle these kinds of people, but she’s making an effort when he’s not in his blank-faced mode to give him more of the emotion that she knows she shows Steve.

Because this matters to Steve.

“I never thought you were.”

“Then why the hell did you send me those coordinates?”

It’s his turn to huff in exasperation. “I don’t know.”

“Idiot,” she shoots back. “You think I can’t smell a lie?”

“I’m sure you tell them.”

“All the time.” And she’s mostly, _mostly_ apologetic about it.

He’s silent for a moment, for a few steps as they go, then he turns his head, just a little, and she finds she can totally see why women fell at his feet.

“When I asked you who I was you didn’t say ‘Bucky Barnes’. You didn’t say ‘James’ or ‘a murderer’ or-“

“You call yourself a murderer again and I’ll stop telling Romanoff to hold off coming here.”

That makes him start. “Natalya-“

“Of course Natasha knows. Just because she dumped everything on the Internet doesn’t mean she’s not still the best out there.”

Barnes blows out a breath. He’s not sure what to do with the information, to be honest. There’s a part of him that clamours in excitement, that wants to tell Maria to _get her down here yesterday_ but he’s not the man he wants to be yet. Doesn't even know who that is. And he’s not sure he’s ready to see Natalya again until he does.

After all, it’s not like either of them was supposed to care to begin with.

“When the memories first started coming back, they were all of the assassinations. All of the missions. There were politicians and families, adults and kids. Everything was bloody. I don’t think I slept for a month. Maybe two.”

Natasha hadn’t slept for six. Maria remembers that.

“I didn’t really remember Steve at first either.” Barnes chuckles a little, shakes his head. “Not big Steve anyway. You seen the pictures of him before the serum?”

This time Maria chuckles. Two very different men, she thinks, and two very identical ones.

“The good ones took their time in coming back. I think maybe Natalya triggered the rest of them in Moscow. And I figured if Steve trusted you, if Natalya trusted you, I had no reason not to.”

It’s not the whole story. She can tell. She can hear it in the cadence of his voice, knows it from the emails and a couple of very pointed if extremely veiled conversations with the Black Widow herself. When he’s not particularly forthcoming with the next piece, she nudges his shoulder and arches an eyebrow when he turns irritated eyes towards her.

He should know better by now.

He huffs, but there’s a smile dancing in the corner of his mouth. “You let me choose.”

He knows in the silence that falls that it’s his choice where to take this. He knows the silence will settle into something comfortable if he doesn’t offer anything else, but that she’ll let him talk until he’s managed to say what he wants.

“Before now, with them,” he waves a hand expansively and she knows he’s talking of all the people who have had control of him. “I was ‘The Asset’. I don’t think I was human.”

Maria snorts her agreement.

“You could have had Natalya bring me in.”

It’s his turn to flip the expectant silence on her. He can see the way her jaw works out of the corner of his eye.

“No,” she says eventually. “I couldn’t have. SHIELD was gone, is still gone in a lot of ways. You’re infinitely more useful alive, both to me and to them. Tactically and emotionally.”

“You admit to the emotion.”

Maria runs her fingers through her hair. “You know, Nat tried to tell me it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t emotionally involved enough to be compromised.” She shakes her head. “I was compromised from the first candy cane.”

Barnes snorts. “He didn’t. A candy cane?”

“It was sweet.”

The look he sends her is not complementary towards Steve, but it makes her smile nonetheless. “It was Christmas, you idiot. Cut him some slack.”

“Whatever you say, Boss,” he quips back, an easy rejoinder that she actually expects to trigger him. But then again, her assumptions have been wrong before, and he doesn’t flinch at the authority he’s given her. Real or not.

“You were safer on the run. Sort of.” She thinks of SHIELD and Coulson, the factions and grassroots movement. He’d always been safer in his own hands. She will damn well make sure he’s safe in hers too. “And there was no way Nat was going to let you go again.”

“She didn’t the first time either. We didn’t get a choice.”

“You do now,” she offers. “Any choice you want. You want to stay here and live out your days, that’s on you. You want to run away to India and take up carpet weaving, have at it. You want to come back with me, to New York and Steve, Nat and the Avengers, we will work something out.”

He stops dead and reaches for her, takes her shoulders and fixes her with the most painfully grateful look she’s seen on this man since her first encounter with him.

“And that’s why it had to be you.”

 

It still doesn’t make sense to her until a couple of days later, phone pressed to her ear and temper sparking. “No.”

“I’m not really giving you a choice here, Hill.”

Maria’s eyebrow arches. She knows that tone. She is intimately familiar with that tone and it’s originator. And if Phil thinks, even for a second, she will be cowed by a tone that was turned on her every time she questioned one of Fury’s orders – which was plenty, thank you, and yes, she is aware it’s why she’d risen in the ranks so quickly – he’s more than just delusional.

“You want me to betray his trust, _Captain America’s_ trust because what? You want to ‘reprogram’ him?”

“Worked for Romanoff.”

Maria doesn’t bother to correct him, nor to point out that Phil’s been out of the Avengers Initiative for a long time now, developing a Fury-level of paranoia she doesn’t much like. (And people wonder why she hadn’t wanted to take over SHIELD, why she hadn’t fought it near as hard as she could have despite the fact that, at the time, it had hurt, being passed over like that.) She doesn’t bother to mention that she’s probably the one closer to Natasha now and the ways all of that, Steve and the strange sort of return of her Soviet once-lover has done interesting things to the Black Widow.

(Nor the way she’s inclined to agree that as much as she believed in SHIELD, as much as she loves Phil, there’s something utterly liberating about not being under their thumb and doing things the damn right way for a change. Not the ‘right things’, necessarily, not like during her SHIELD days, but in the way she feels is right.)

“Not going to happen,” she says.

“You’re not trained for this.”

“Neither are you,” she points out, glad he’s not there to see her roll her eyes. “Don’t push me on this. Put your connections up against mine and tell me which one of us is going to win here.”

“We can find you.”

This time she does snort. “You can’t. We’ve both made sure of that.”

“You’re putting me in a difficult place here.”

“I’m really not,” she points out easily. “I’m asking you to trust me, something you used to do without thinking twice. You’re getting a little paranoid there, Director.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Maria looks back over her shoulder, at the man she’d known had been lounging in the doorway since the call had come in. “Oh. I know.”

Because she’s discovered that when it comes to Barnes she is paranoid. Of more things than merely what he’s capable of, given the right circumstances. It’s not like the stakes are ever really that far from her mind. But she’s not blind to the fact that she’s more paranoid about messing this up, about making him worse, about not being the right person for this job. She’s not blind to the fact that her fears and paranoia are less about the man and more about what comes next.

That’s the problem, the real core of what’s got her concerned about this whole thing. Barnes doesn’t scare her. He never really has. What terrifies her is the fact that she has no idea how he’ll react to New York, to Steve and Natasha being in the same place, to the danger that is inherent in who he is, who Steve is and who the Avengers are.

She’s been trying to avoid that mindset as much as she can, that this won’t work, that Barnes will go on a rampage, that he’ll never remember Steve, that he’ll snub Natasha. What he does to her, she’s not sure she much cares; she’s been in closer situations with worse people. She can take it, but Maria knows without a doubt if he hurts Nat, if he hurts Steve, she’ll have to kill him. There’s nothing in the world she wants to do less than kill Barnes.

She will, she will not hesitate, but God, _God_ , she doesn’t want to.


	7. Chapter 7

When Natasha corners him in early December, Steve knows he’s not going to like what’s coming.

“Maria’s not the only one who’s been lying to you about the Winter Soldier,” she says, face blank and stoic. Steve knows that face and as a general rule, hates it. It’s never boded good things for him. It’s the kind of face Natasha wears just before she’s going to launch herself into a battle she’s not sure she can win, but she’s damn well going to do it anyway.

He can tell she’s thinking about how to go on, whether she wants to beat around the bush, whether she wants to give him half truths. It’s the same face Maria had given him in his doorway before disappearing south and Steve doesn’t like the look on Natasha’s face anymore than he had Maria’s. They both know he won’t know whether to believe her or not, no matter what she chooses. But he watches her take a breath, watches the inhale fill her chest.

“He’s not ready,” she finally says. He believes her completely. There’s a certainty in the way she says it, no like she’s testing, but like she knows.

And maybe she does.

“Maria asked me to look over a year ago,” Natasha reveals, her fingers weaving together. “All I could find was a ghost.”

“Until.”

A smile Steve can only call girlish takes over her face. “Until we met in Moscow.”

“Maria knew. About Moscow.”

“I told her,” Nat agrees quietly. “Last Christmas.”

Steve’s shoulders slump. He’s not sure how to feel about it really. He’s angry at Nat for not coming to him about it; he’s angry at Maria for keeping him away; he’s angry at Hydra and even Bucky himself, for not trusting the man who has always been his best friend.

A shove at his shoulders sends him stumbling backwards and it’s Natasha’s face that follows. She’s not placid anymore, not blank. Her eyes are hard and brittle and like nothing he’s ever seen in her face and couldn't have anticipated, given the way she’d first approached him.

“No,” she says. “You do not get to be upset. At any of us.”

Temper flares, a temper he’s been holding on to so hard, trying to keep calm while the woman he loves and the man he wants back so badly are thousands of miles away. Together. “The hell I can’t.”

She swears, long and loud, shoves him again. It’s the second shove, the pure rage on her face, that has Steve snapping his mouth shut.

“He is not only yours, Steve,” she snaps at him.

He growls, catches hold of her wrists. But she is Natasha, and has him pinned back to the wall in a flash of red hair and smooth flexibility.

“You are compromised,” she hisses at him. “What were you planning on doing once you found him, _Captain_? The last time you tried to shock him back to your Bucky he almost killed you.”

It stings. There’s no two ways about that. The memories still hurt, Bucky’s face, the confusion and anger and ruthlessness. The sting is deliberate, trying to shock him out of his anger. Natasha’s done it before, successfully, and this time is no different. His body goes lax and Natasha relaxes too, slim and easy. There’s a tremor there though, humming under the anger, and Steve’s been reading Natasha for almost as long as he’s been reading Maria.

“You knew him, too.”

Natasha doesn’t exactly go stiff, but she is definitely not as relaxed. “I knew him.”

She won’t look at him, her mouth turned down just a little at the corners.

“Nat?”

Steve’s never felt Natasha shudder like she does right then, right against him, and it’s instinct that makes him wrap her up, close and tight. She struggles, but he holds fast, hugs her tight and long. Eventually, she relaxes, buries her face in his shoulder and it takes him a moment to realize there are actual tears in her eyes.

He sighs. “You loved him.” A beat. “You still love him.”

She shudders again, but after a moment, she’s got herself back under control and pulls back.

“She was the only one who could go,” Natasha says. “I would have wanted James back. You would have wanted Bucky.”

His eyes close as his head knocks back against the wall. “She won’t ask him to be either of those things.”

There’s pride in the words, but also resignation, the unfortunate realization that he’s put Maria in a brutal position. Not on purpose, by far, but he can acknowledge that there’s pressure on Maria’s shoulders he hadn’t considered before. He’d assumes Bucky has just been another agent to Hydra, another body that they could control more completely than any other soldier. But if Natasha had loved him, if she loves him now, then there is a whole other past to him, another life.

And Maria, in a foreign country without backup, is in charge of marrying the two.

Now he knows what Natasha means. She’s right, he can’t be mad. Not really, not when he knows she’s right. He can’t imagine the restraint Natasha’s had to exercise to keep herself away, given how hard he’s twitching.

“Steve.” Natasha steps back, squares her shoulders. “She will, you know. She’ll bring him back.”

“I know.”

But as he looks at Natasha, as he watches her, he knows they’re both thinking exactly the same thing.

It’s not about ‘if’ Maria brings Bucky back, not even about ‘when’.

It’s about ‘who’.

 

He leans against the tree, flips a knife, flips it again to see the way the light glints off the blade. In the other, he holds his phone. The phone with two contacts on it: Maria and Natalya. One here, one back in New York.

New York.

It’s been twitching under his skin for a few days now, the way this routine is good and settled, but not enough. The way he hears Maria talk about missions, about Steve, about Natalya and the Avengers, what they do and what it means. He wants to do that. He wants to give back, to take control and do what Natalya’s done: use what Hydra made him against them.

The problem is, he’s not sure he’s ready.

Maria won’t offer her opinion on it. The boss is adamant that this be his choice, that he be the one to step up and tell her it’s time to go home. She’d stay here, he knows, as long as it took, even if it meant being away from Steve and he has to admire her for that. But she’s been here almost a month now, maybe more, and this isn’t her home.

He’s not sure it’s his either.

So, he makes a call.

He wakes her, he knows he does. She answers with a grunt that shouldn’t make him smile but it’s so _her_ that he can’t help it. Natalya still does not like waking up and it’s a holdover that makes him smile.

“I think I’m ready.”

She swears, colourfully enough that his eyebrow rises.

“I thought it would make you happier.”

“If it weren’t still dark out,” she grouses. “I’m still the best, but going a round or two with Captain America is not a walk in the park, James.”

He feels instantly guilty because he knows the only reason he could even imagine Steve and Natalya fighting each other hard enough to hurt the next day is, well, over him.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

She hums and he feels like she’s waving it away. “He’s not mad at you.”

“He should be.”

He expects her to get upset or disgruntled, expects her to tell him he’s wrong and there’s nothing for anyone to be mad at him about. Instead she sighs and sounds impossibly fond. He has to swallow around the lump in his throat, around the way he feels like he’s itching under his skin, tugged along by his heart moving north without the rest of his body along for the ride.

He chews on his mouth, thinks about what he wants to say next. He wants her opinion, wants to know if she thinks he’s been away long enough, if it’s enough time to turn into the man he wants to be. He wants her to say ‘that’s enough, James, come home’ and he will. He knows he will, in a heartbeat.

“I can’t tell you what to do _miley moy_ ,” she tells him, voice gentle and he almost laughs.

 _You know I won’t,_ is what he hears, and rightly so. There’s no one in the world who understands what he’s going through like his Natalya.

But he misses her, like a gnawing hole in his gut and while he genuinely likes Maria, genuinely trusts Maria, that isn’t all there is. There’s Natalya and Steve, warmth and gentleness, tenderness that he’s pretty sure isn’t Maria’s style but can be Natalya’s when she’s not utterly, gorgeously lethal.

He wants it.

He also wants promises, guarantees that he won’t lose it again, that he’s not going to become the Winter Soldier in the middle of Times Square and just panic. There’s enough blood on his hands to last him a lifetime.

“There is no right answer.”

It’s the second time she’s all but read his mind and it’s disconcerting as much as it is comforting. Still, he sucks in a deep breath, pushes forward with knowledge he’s only gleaned from half-conversations and veiled references. “When did you know?”

She sucks in a deep breath and it shakes out when she releases it. “I still don’t.”

It’s the most comforting thing she could have said. His shoulders relax, roll like he’s just finished the most delicious stretch. He feels the smile spread across his face, wide and bright.

“I think,” he says, certainty flooding his chest, his stomach, turning everything warm and right. “I think I’ll be home for Christmas.”


	8. Chapter 8

When Maria wakes the air feels different. There’s a certainty and confidence in the air that she hasn’t felt since arriving in Costa Rica. She doesn’t exactly leap from the bed, but it’s a close thing. Barnes is there when she yanks open her door, lugging a large duffle out of his room.

“Leaving so soon?”

He flashes her an honest to god grin that leaves her maybe a little stunned. “It’s time.”

“Okay,” she says slowly because it is too damn early to try and decipher this without coffee. Thankfully, there’s some, still warm in the carafe. She pours herself a mug, watches him drag two more bags from his room. It’s a terrifying arsenal if she really thinks about it.

So, she doesn’t.

“Barnes.”

His head comes up and that smile is still there, smaller, less of the giant grin, but there nonetheless. The set of his shoulders is more relaxed, sure. He’s excited, she realizes, excited and certain and it is, objectively, a good look on him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Packing,” he replies and Maria gets the sense that she’s supposed to know what that means. His face, she thinks, is the literal representation of ‘little shit’.

“Time to move on?”

He makes an affirmative noise but still refuses to offer up any actual information.

Maria rolls her eyes. Fine, she’ll play along. “Where to this time? Mexico? Hawaii? Canada?”

“I was thinking New York.”

Well, that pulls her up short. His shoulders have bunched, just a little, but she just blinks. “Barnes.”

He straightens, defensive in a way Maria hasn’t seen since about her first week with him, like he actually believes she’s going to tell him ‘no’. Like she could.

“It’s time to go home.”

The shiver drills down her spine, leaves her almost shaking with its intensity. She actually has to measure her breathes for a few minutes to keep them steady. It’s terrifying and exciting, half of her yearning to tell him ‘yes’, to just get out of here, and half of her a little disconcerted by what feels like a one-eighty.

She sets her mug carefully on the counter. “You sure you’re ready for that?”

She’s surprisingly, endlessly, grateful when he shrugs. “There’s nothing left for me here.”

Which is also extremely comforting.

“And if you relapse?” She’s not about to baby him now and it’s a legitimate concern, the one that she knows has been hovering over both of them, over Steve and Natasha back in New York.

Barnes eyes are back to that certainty, doubtless. “They won’t let me. You won’t let me.”

Well.

“I guess I have to make some calls.”

 

The first call she makes is to Melinda May.

“You sure?” May asks because that’s her job and it’s a conversation Maria would much rather have with May than with Coulson.

“He is,” Maria answers.

“And you believe him?”

Maria wants to laugh. She almost does. “I have no reason not to.”

May makes a non-committal hum, but tells her she’ll work something out.

. . . . .

The second call she makes is to Pepper.

“We’re coming back.”

Pepper’s exhale sounds loud over the phone. “Merry Christmas.”

Maria barks out a laugh. “Yeah.”

“We can put something together,” Pepper goes on. “It won’t take long, we can use the common floor-“

“No,” Maria says softly. “I think… I think just Steve. Just Natasha.”

Pepper makes a sympathetic noise, but doesn’t push. “Of course.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ll be glad to have you back. Both of you.”

It’s such a Pepper thing to say and Maria’s smiling as she hangs up.

. . . . .

She doesn’t call Natasha. She figures Barnes will do that.

. . . . .

She does call Steve.

“We’re coming home,” she breathes out before he even manages to greet her.

Steve makes a sound like he’s been punched in the gut and Maria starts to feel the excitement bleed out of her pores. She can’t help it. She is genuinely happy Barnes wants to return to New York. She is genuinely happy to be instrumental in reuniting the two men.

“Maria,” he finally gets out and he sounds wrecked, choked, not that she can blame him. Even she can’t honestly say she’s unaffected by all of this. “When?”

She flips her wrist over, checks her watch. “A couple of hours. For the party.”

She wonders for a few moments if the phone’s dropped out when it never has before, wonders if Steve’s even breathing before he says. “Come home, Maria.”

“Yes.”

 

Steve can’t breathe. His chest is tight, his stomach is in knots. He’s on pins and needles waiting for the jet to land, for Bucky and Maria to arrive.

For them to come home.

He shifts from foot to foot, can’t stop himself despite the easy nonchalance that Natasha seems to have adopted. She’s lounging against the nearby wall while Steve tries with everything in him not to pace.

“Patience,” Natasha says, a smirk on her face and amusement in her voice. “Soon.”

“Easy for you to say,” Steve snarks back at her. “You’ve seen him in the last year.”

Natasha hums, but then her eyes focus far away. It takes his hearing a moment before he picks up the sound of the quinjet coming. His heart leaps into his throat and he feels Natasha step up beside him.

“Ready?”

“No,” he admits and is surprisingly grateful when Natasha takes his hand. It’s more the kind of thing he would do, but he appreciates the gesture nonetheless. They stand there together watching the jet come in and Steve finds himself swallowing around a lump in his throat. It’s a different feeling now, standing beside her, than the frustration and anger that had characterized their last interaction.

Then the plane is touching down and Steve tries to breathe, counts to four, counts to five. Natasha’s grip is painfully hard on his hand and he only spares a brief moment to consider whether she’ll break his hand before there’s nothing else in the world but the ramp dropping, the two minutes it takes for both Maria and Bucky’s feet to come into view. He’s not sure which one of them to take in first, Maria whom he’s missed like crazy, her steadiness, the easy way she is around him and only him, or Bucky, whom he was sure he would be forever without until his face had shown up, a gun pointed at Steve’s face and a metal arm.

It’s Natasha who makes the decision for him, cutting off a choked noise before she seems utterly unable to stay still and launches herself at Bucky. His oldest friend catches her easily, lifts her into his arms, wraps her up tight against him. To Steve, from this far, with Natasha obscuring his vision, he looks good, and the gratitude, the absolute joy, swells up in his chest.

In a couple of strides, he has Maria in his arms. She hugs him back, easily wonderfully, and Steve hides his face in her shoulder.

“You brought him back,” Steve says, his grip suffocating and steadying in equal measure and he feels Maria tremble beneath his hands, against his chest. “Maria, you brought him back.”

Those agonizing weeks disappear in the feel of her, the smell of her, the way he can hear Bucky and Natasha murmuring not that far away. He tugs his finger under her chin, tilts her head up and kisses her, says so many things with that kiss neither of them say out loud. How much he loves her, how much he needs her, how touched and grateful he is to have her, for everything she did to bring Bucky back.

And then there’s a broad hand on his shoulder, old familiar eyes locked on his, looking apologetic and pained, guilty. “Hey punk.”

Steve doesn’t care if he’s crying as he lets Maria go and wraps Bucky up instead, hard and close with all of his super strength because god, Bucky can take it now. They’re on even keel again, together, the same path.

He lets Bucky go to reach for Maria again, tucks her under his arm even though he knows she hates it. She comes so easily anyway, like she knows this is exactly what it means. Natasha wiggles her way in then, and Steve watches Bucky wrap her up, pull her in, include her here.

His heart is full and wonderful and he knows, without fail, this is the best kind of Christmas present he could have received.

 

**Bonus Epilogue**

Maria dozes against his chest, relaxed and pliant in ways he so rarely sees. It’s amazing to have her back, to think she’d put herself in such a perilous position to bring Bucky home. He isn’t naïve enough to think that everything will be okay now, but he can’t help feeling bolstered by the fact that Bucky and Maria are so obviously close, that she’d given Bucky another connection to the here and now.

This woman.

He presses his mouth to her head, inhales the scent of her he hasn’t had in months.

“You’re being creepy,” she murmurs, her fingertips ghosting against his arm.

He laughs, tries to choke it all back. “I’m good.”

“Liar.”

He pulls her closer, tighter, listens to her quiet hum as she shifts to a more comfortable position. And cannot hold himself back. “I want to marry you.”

She goes stiff. He smoothes his hand down her back, tries to caress her back to relaxation. But he knows it’s in vain.

“You knew that.”

Her shoulders drop a little. Of course she’d known but she can’t help thinking it’s only been a year and at the very least, she’s not ready. “Steve, we’re good like this. A piece of paper won’t make a difference.”

She’s not saying ‘no’ he reminds himself, forces himself to breathe, slow and deep. “I’m not asking.”

Her body goes limp.

“I won’t ask. I’m telling you I want to marry you. I won’t ask until you’re ready. Until you tell me I can.”

“And if that never happens?” she asks softly.

He forces himself to count to ten, to really think about what he’s going to say next. “I know how I feel about you. That will never change. I want to make that promise, that commitment, in front of the people we’ve adopted as family.”

She stays silent. He’s not offended, not really. It’s not something he expected her to greet with open arms. By now he knows her, her fears and resentments, the way she is utterly terrified of being helpless, of being tied down and losing her independence. And even though he knows she doesn’t believe he could, or would, do any of that, he knows that kind of fear takes years to get over.

She hasn’t had years. She’s had lovers, he knows, relationships even, but none that have pushed her, that have asked for everything. He is asking for everything.

Then she shifts against him, warm soft curves, smelling of Maria and the tropics. “We should probably move in together first.”

Steve buries his face into Maria’s shoulder and grins.


End file.
